Infosys-ICTS Chandrasekhar Lectures
The renowned astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar worked on a variety of pathbreaking problems in his lifetime. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 for formulating theories for the creation of the ‘white dwarf’ as the hydrogen fuel of stars of a certain size runs out. The Infosys-ICTS Chandrasekhar Lecture Series are delivered by eminent physicists. The first lecture in any series is aimed at a general audience, while the remaining are targeted at specialists.
Past Lectures
Random Matrix Theory and the dynamics of nonequilibrium interfaces
Herbert Spohn (Technical University, Munich)
27 October 2015, 16:00 to 17:00
Ramanujan Lecture Hall, ICTS campus
In a very influential work, Kardar, Parisi, and Zhang studied the dynamics of growing interfaces, in particular their self-similar structure. For two- dimensional bulk, one-dimensional interface, there is a surprising link to Random Matrix Theory. With this insight, beyond exponents, scaling...more
The Nonlinear Physics of Disordered Systems: From Amorphous Solids to Complex Flows
Itamar Procaccia (The Weizmann Institute of Science)
06 April 2015, 16:00 to 17:00
ICTS Lecture Hall, IISc Campus, Bangalore
The Nonlinear Physics of Disordered Systems: From Amorphous Solids to Complex Flows In these three lectures I will present ideas and methods to advance the physics of strong disorder. As usual in nonlinear physics one rarely can employ standard methods - nonlinear systems require specialized...more
Quantum entanglement in macroscopic matter
T Senthil (Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
13 January 2015, 17:00 to 18:00
Physics Auditorium, IISc campus, Bangalore
A powerful organizing principle to describe and distinguish phases of macroscopic matter is provided by the concepts of broken symmetry and long range order. Modern work in quantum condensed matter physics has however revealed the inadequacy of these concepts in capturing the essence of many...more
New Dialogues: Entanglement, Holography and Renormalization
Robert Myers (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada)
10 December 2014, 16:00 to 17:00
Physics Auditorium, IISc campus, Bangalore
In science, we often see new advances and insights emerging from the intersection of different ideas coming from what appeared to be disconnected research areas. The theme of my colloquium will be an ongoing collision between the three ideas listed in my title which has been generating interesting...more
Strongly correlated systems: From models to materials
Antoine Georges (Professor of Collège de France and at Ecole Polytechnique)
10 January 2014, 11:15 to 12:15
Faculty Hall, IISc, Bangalore
Lecture-1 : Quantum Matter from Hot Superconductors to Cold Atoms. Date : January 10, 2014 Time : 11:15 - 12:30 HRS (IST) Venue: Faculty Hall, IISc, Bangalore Lecture-2 : Understanding and Controlling Materials with Strong Electronic Correlations: Recent Advances from Dynamical Mean-Field Theory...more
Advances in Graphene, Majorana Fermions, Quantum Computation
Sankar Das Sarma (Univeristy of Maryland, USA)
19 December 2012, 16:30 to 17:30
Auditorium, New Physical Sciences Building, IISc
These lectures will cover three modern topics in physics: graphene, quantum computation, and Majorana fermions. Graphene is a two-dimensional Dirac material existing in nature where the energy dispersion follows the chiral massless Dirac-Weyl equation. It has very intriguing properties which will...more
Scattering Without Space Time
Nima Arkani-Hamed (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA)
25 September 2012, 16:00 to 17:00
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA
Lecture 1 - 25 Sep 2012, 04:00 PM Seminar Hall, ICTS, IISc campus, Bangalore Lecture 2 - 26 Sep 2012, 04:00 PM Seminar Hall, ICTS, IISc campus, Bangalore Lecture 3 - 27 Sep 2012, 04:00 PM Seminar Hall, ICTS, IISc campus, Bangalore Discussion Meetingmore
Top Eigenvalue of a Random Matrix: A tale of tails
Satya Majumdar (Directeur de Recherche in CNRS)
27 January 2012, 16:00 to 17:00
New Physical Sciences Building Auditorium, IISc, Bangalore
Random matrices were first introduced by Wishart (1928) in the statistics literature to describe the covariance matrix of large data sets. In physics literature, Wigner introduced random matrices to describe the highly excited energy levels of large complex nuclei. Random matrix theory (RMT) proved...more
Is Direct Numerical Simulation of Turbulence Entering into The High-Precision Era?
Uriel Frisch (Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur Universite de Nice-Sophia Antipolis)
12 December 2011, 16:00 to 17:00
Faculty Hall, IISc, Bangalore
Over the last few years direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulence have achieved, in extreme cases, spatial resolutions of 32K squared collocation points in 2D and 4K cubed points in 3D. In the past it was deemed not necessary in DNS simulations to exceed double precision (roughly 16...more
Applied String Theory
Dam Thanh Son (University of Washington,)
21 March 2011, 16:00 to 17:00
AG 66, TIFR, Mumbai
Gauge/gravity duality, discovered in string theory in 1997, has became a powerful theoretical tool in the study of quantum field theories at strong coupling. I will review recent attempts to use gauge/gravity duality to understand the physics of strongly interacting media, focusing on the quark...more

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